The Republican’s strong, but losing, performance in the New York gubernatorial election may have secured a GOP majority in the House of Representatives.
The Republican’s strong, but losing, performance in the New York gubernatorial election may have secured a GOP majority in the House of Representatives.
T here are no moral victories in elections, but losing candidates can nonetheless have a positive effect for their party if they pull other candidates to victory. Lee Zeldin’s remarkable performance in New York is an example of how a losing candidate can do just that.
As of now, with 94 percent reporting, Zeldin has won 47.4 percent of the vote in New York, with incumbent Democrat Kathy Hochul winning 52.6 percent. That’s a comfortable win for Hochul, but it’s the best performance for a Republican gubernatorial candidate in New York in 20 years. Since George Pataki won in 2002 with 49.4 percent of the vote, here are the performances of GOP gubernatorial candidates in New York:
- 2006, John Faso, 27.1 percent
- 2010, Carl Paladino, 33.5 percent
- 2014, Rob Astorino, 40.3 percent
- 2018, Marc Molinaro, 36.2 percent
That’s a pretty demoralizing string of blowout losses. In other states with similar Democratic dominance, Republicans don’t focus much on the gubernatorial race, nominating no-name candidates and effectively conceding before the race even starts.
Zeldin took the race seriously. He has represented Long Island in Congress since 2015 and had earned a fairly secure job there. But he took the risk of running for governor against a weak, unelected Democratic opponent, and he ran to win.
He focused on crime, which was somewhat natural considering that he was assaulted at a campaign event over the summer and two people were shot outside his home a month before Election Day. He put in a strong performance in the one and only debate with Hochul, hammering home his message on crime, attacking “pay-to-play corruption” in Albany, and knocking Hochul’s strict Covid policies.
And, for a Republican in New York, he performed shockingly well. He nearly won Erie County, home of Buffalo and where Hochul began her political career. In the New York City area, Zeldin made massive progress compared to previous Republican efforts.
He still lost most counties there, of course, but the wins on Long Island and Staten Island are significant. And due to the massive populations of the more solidly blue counties, overperforming there, even while still losing by a significant margin, earns a ton of votes for the statewide total.
Zeldin really ran up the margins, in percentage-point terms, in the rural upstate counties. Compared to Molinaro in 2018 and Trump in 2020, Zeldin in some cases did twelve percentage points better. The following graph shows Zeldin’s overperformance vs. other recent Republicans in twelve different upstate counties.
The idea that Trump had some sort of unique and irreplicable appeal to rural voters does not seem to be true, at least in New York. Those counties aren’t as populous as downstate, but there are many of them, and the size of Zeldin’s overperformance in percentage-point terms contributed to his overperformance statewide.
Running up the score outside of New York City did not make Zeldin the next governor of New York. But it did help send Republican House candidates to Washington.
In New York’s 19th district, Molinaro avenged his 2018 gubernatorial loss by winning election to the House. Mike Lawler beat Democratic incumbent Sean Patrick Maloney in the 17th district, which was the first time in 40 years a Republican defeated the Democratic House fundraising committee chairman. Republican Anthony D’Esposito won the fourth district, which borders Queens, by four percentage points. Just north of there in the third district, Republican George Santos won by eight.
In the 18th district, it’s too close to call right now, with only about 2,000 votes separating Republican Colin Schmitt from Democratic incumbent Pat Ryan. The Syracuse-area 22nd district is also too close to call, with Republican Brandon Williams holding a narrow lead over Democrat Francis Cole.
Those narrow victories and potential victories likely would not have been on the table without Zeldin’s strong showing at the top of the ticket. An also-ran gubernatorial nominee who was obsessed with the 2020 election and ignored New Yorkers’ real concerns about Hochul would have weighed those House candidates down instead of boosting them up. For a counterexample to Zeldin’s performance, see neighboring Pennsylvania, where gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano got hosed, and zero potential Republican House pickups panned out.
In what turned out to be a less successful Republican House performance than expected nationwide, New York’s Republican congressional candidates did well. In the likely narrow Republican House majority that will result when the dust settles, it’s possible that New York will have made the difference between GOP control and another term as speaker for Nancy Pelosi. For that, we have Lee Zeldin to thank.